While companies continue to invest in teams of data experts, a new survey suggests that adding more data analytics wizards might not be the solution. In fact, the survey found that during the course of a workday, data analysts spend less than half their time actually analyzing data. This surprising information is just one of the findings from a global survey of data professionals sponsored by Fivetran, an automated data integration provider. The company released the survey report in conjunction with its inaugural Data Analyst Appreciation Day.
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Conducted by Dimensional Research, the online survey of approximately 500 data professionals across five continents also shows 68 percent of the respondents have ideas that would drive more profit for their organizations but lack time to implement them. More than 60 percent of respondents reported wasting time waiting for engineering resources several times each month and often spending one-third of every workday just trying to access data. Nearly all respondents (90 percent) said their work was slowed by numerous unreliable data sources over the last 12 months.
“The struggles data professionals face in simply doing their work and the time they waste is astounding,” said George Fraser, co-founder and CEO of Fivetran. “To keep critical analytics projects moving, these unsung heroes contend with numerous workarounds to compensate for unavailable engineering resources and unreliable data sources. Fivetran ready-to-use connectors help remove some of these bottlenecks and allow analysts to instead focus on uncovering insights.”
As enterprises strive to optimize decision-making in a rapidly evolving global economic landscape, the study indicates that enabling analysts to spend more time analyzing and less time finding, fixing and stabilizing data will drive better decisions and increased profits. Much of the problem lies in data integrity, quality and access — the top three challenges almost unanimously pointed to by the survey respondents.
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